Cooling of high performance integrated circuits with high heat dissipation is presenting significant challenge in the electronics cooling arena. Conventional cooling with heat pipes and fan mounted heat sinks are not adequate for cooling chips with every increasing wattage requirements, including those exceeding 100 W.
Electronics servers, such as blade servers and rack servers, are being used in increasing numbers due to the higher processor performance per unit volume one can achieve. However, the high density of integrated circuits also leads to high thermal density, which is beyond the capability of conventional air-cooling methods.
A particular problem with cooling integrated circuits on electronics servers is that multiple electronics servers are typically mounted in close quarters within a server chassis. In such configurations, electronics servers are separated by a limited amount of space, thereby reducing the dimensions within which to provide an adequate cooling solution. Typically, stacking of electronics servers does not provide the mounting of large fans and heat sinks for each electronics server. Often electronics server stacks within a single server chassis are cooled by one large fan, a heat sink or both. Using this configuration, the integrated circuits on each electronics server are cooled using the heat sink and the large fan that blows air over the heat sink, or simply by blowing air directly over the electronics servers. However, considering the limited free space surrounding the stacked electronics servers within the server chassis, the amount of air available for cooling the integrated circuits is limited.
As servers increase in power and power density, it is no longer feasible to air cool the entire server rack. Liquid cooling systems, such as closed-loop liquid cooling systems and heat pipes, present alternative methodologies for conventional cooling solutions. Liquid cooling needs to occur at the integrated circuit level on a electronics server. Due to the density of the electronics and the high power densities of ultra high performance servers, the heat picked up by a liquid cooling loop cannot be effectively discharged to the air via a radiator, as is common practice in other form factors such as desktops and work stations. The heat must be transferred to the server rack cooling system, which may be comprised of a pumped refrigerant or chilled water loop. A key requirement of servers is the ability to swap in and out electronics servers. As such, there is a need to effectively connect and disconnect each electronics server and its corresponding cooling system to and from the rack cooling system.